Interview on Tell Me Your Story with Rev. Dr. D. Richard Dugan

Joshua Pritikin was interviewed by Rev. Dr. D. Richard Dugan on Tell Me Your Story: New Paradigms for a New World. The conversation covers the core ideas of Religion Unburdened by Belief—reducing conviction in beliefs, the distinction between process beliefs and content beliefs, Internal Family Systems, altered states, and the relationship between personal spiritual development and our polarized political moment.

Transcript

Oh, come on, walk with me, talk with me, tell me your stories. I’ll do my very best to understand you, your flesh and blood. Welcome to Tell Me Your Story, new paradigms for a new world where we’re giving you choices and knowledge of those choices to help make your dreams come true. We are here nine times a week, Sundays at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday mornings at 1 a.m., Wednesdays at 9 a.m., and Monday through Friday from 8 to 9 a.m., streaming live at all those times at richarddougan.com. We are on SoundCloud, iTunes, TuneIn Radio, Spotify, Stitcher, Player FM, as well as YouTube, where you can watch these conversations. I hope that you will take time to subscribe and click notifications so that when a new conversation is posted, you’ll be notified and you’ll be able to tune in, listen in and learn, be entertained and inspired. A reminder that Choices, which is my book, Five Steps for Life, it’s available on Amazon.com in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle with Audible soon to be released. We also ask that if you can support the work that we are doing financially, we do have a PayPal account. It is there for your security as well as ours. And when they ask for an email address to whom you’re sending, please go to richarddougan.com. That’s the email address. If you go to richarddougan.com, there is also a link directly to PayPal so that you can send us whatever support you can. And we thank you, thank you, thank you to those who have helped and to those who will help. We also ask that you take time during this decade of perfect vision, the 2020s, to go within to that quiet, peaceful, calm, still place and listen to that still, small voice. And with that, we now take you to our very special interview and guest here on Tell Me Your Story.

Dugan: And welcome to Tell Me Your Story, New Paradigms for a New World. I am Reverend Dr. D. Richard Dugan and our very special guest here on the program is a gentleman who is going to share with us, I will say sort of a continuation of what we talked about with Greg Braden many years ago with his book about the healing power of belief, but we’re going to go in a little different direction, I think, and we’re going to talk with a PhD gentleman who has a PhD in psychology. He’s asking how tightly we should hold to hold any belief. And it’s, and whether religion, religious, pardon me, spiritual or personal, and finds the answer, finding the answers is less than you think. And Joshua Pritikin, I want to thank you very much, doctor, for joining us here on the program.

Joshua: No, thank you. It’s my pleasure.

Dugan: I am, I’m always fascinated, Joshua, by this kind of a conversation when it comes to the more metaphysical aspects. First of all, when we talk about this concept, if you will, of religion unburdened by belief, are we talking about using science and facts to base our personal philosophy on? How are we unburdened? How are we unburdening religion by belief? What does that mean?

Joshua: Okay, well, kind of struggling here to understand your question. So the idea of the book is that many people have had religious experiences on occasion, maybe by accident, like they feel a sense that they’re a presence of something greater or a sense of awe or beauty. And what I’m trying to address here is make those experiences very predictable, like make the odds of having them high so that you can decide when you want to have religious experiences and put it on your calendar and make it that predictable and give feedback about how you’re progressing in your religious personal development.

Dugan: Well, now I interviewed an evangelical Christian many years ago, I wish I could remember his name off the top of my head. And the conversation that we were having had to do with his experience of out-of-body experience. And now, just so you have point of reference, I’ve born and raised Catholic myself. I worked for 15 years in the 80s and early 90s for a Christian radio station. So I have heard all kinds of wonderful things. And I was always disappointed when there was criticism of people by the hierarchy, if you will, both Protestant and Catholic. Well, not so much Catholic, but mostly Protestant, who said, oh, I’m sorry, that’s not in the Bible. So that didn’t happen. And yet here’s a guy who believes and supposedly follows. And yet here he was consciously and intentionally recreating these experiences. I even asked him, he says, do you ever wanna not come back? He says, oh, no, no, I’ve always wanted to come back, but I’ve just loved the experience. Well, who am I to tell him he didn’t have it? And that’s kind of where a lot of these people were coming from who were criticizing those who had these different supernatural or spiritual experiences. Is that kind of where we’re coming from, that someone has had this profound event happen in their lives and it felt really good and maybe they felt complete or they felt as though they had a certain level of knowing that they knew about certain things, even though it was just within them. Is that something that we’re talking about here?

Joshua: Sure, I mean, if people feel like they’ve had an experience, like who am I to say that they haven’t, I mean, that’s something that’s between you and the experience, right? And that’s one thing I clarify in the first chapter, although the title is about religion unburdened by belief. In the first chapter, like I clarified it, what I’m really talking about is reducing conviction. So the reason that’s relevant is like this person who had an out of body experience, it sounds like people disbelieved him or express their disbeliefs about it. And from my point of view, like I would advocate for reducing a conviction in disbeliefs as well as beliefs. So that’s where I’m coming from when I say, like who am I to invalidate someone’s experience? Like I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to disbelieve someone’s experience with that much conviction.

Dugan: Yeah, well, of course, there are those who, they adhere to a certain perspective on what I like to call the ancient wisdom teachings, specifically the Bible. And now I’m seeing more and more information about, for example, they’re all of the different translations. Now, if a lot of people are talking about this Ethiopian Bible that has a whole lot more in it, you know, that actually is gonna cause some consternation amongst the hierarchy within both Protestant and Catholic. Although the Catholic Church does seem to be a little bit more open to some of these things, especially, for example, when they wanna canonize, say, a pope, a pope that’s passed on, gotta have three miracles. Well, now you gotta investigate and you gotta prove that those miracles happened or at least have sufficient, I’m not even sure what it is, to say, okay, and now we have Saint John Paul II, however they’ve done that. I’m curious, now my beliefs, for example, I view them as sort of straw huts. And I was having a conversation with a gentleman who shared his perspective in our conversation and I came back with, well, I’m thinking about it this way. And he says, well, I understand that, but, and then he came back with his sort of retort or his con to my pro. And I thought about it for a couple of seconds and I’m going, well, there’s another straw hut up in flames and I’m willing to burn them all to the ground and start over, if that’s what it takes, to better understand who I am, where I am and why I am here. Is that sort of kind of what you’re looking for in trying to encouraging people to be willing to not hold so tightly to those straw huts and yeah, maybe even sometimes burning them to the ground and starting over because there’s new, I don’t know, new information and maybe it’s not information, just you’ve had a new experience that doesn’t jive with what you were taught to believe. That’s kind of where we’re coming from, isn’t it? Learning how to do that.

Joshua: Yeah, yeah, I like that framing because it’s like suppose you have expectations about what’s supposed to happen in an altered state, then often those expectations can color your interpretation of it. So like if you believe you’re going to hell and then you have some altered state that can like be a self-fulfilling prophecy that you end up having a bad time because you expect it to. So what the book really focuses on is like you can’t avoid some beliefs but there’s a difference between beliefs that enable exploration and other beliefs that like color your expectations. So I make a distinction between process beliefs, beliefs that enable exploration. Like if you’re going to practice meditation, then you have to believe that sitting quietly for 10 or 15 minutes is possible and that you can direct attention. So those are process beliefs about your self-efficacy that are necessary to hold.

Dugan: Yeah, it’s interesting, two things. Number one is my elder sister who has since passed on. We were, it was some holiday and I’m thinking it was probably maybe Easter and they were in my sister’s back bedroom and they were doing this hand scanning. They were just scanning over the body, not touching it. Just, okay, what do you feel? What do you feel, what do you feel? And I came into the room and I’m watching this and they said, here, lay down and let Jeanette, who is my eldest sister, let her scan your body. And so she did and as she went over my throat, she got a sensation of heat in her hands, which kind of makes sense, I guess, because that’s where my focal point is. But she could never accept the reality that we had these chakras and those kinds of things. And it’s just fascinating to me how we gravitate to certain beliefs. I was interviewing a Christian musician back in those days. His name is John Fisher and he grew up in the Jesus movement and when I was interviewing, he was living in New England and he says, you know, one day I went into my, I love this phrase, he was in his lonely writer’s garret and he was looking out the window at the leaves. It was fall and they were falling off the trees and the colors and everything. And the thought occurred to him and this question for him came, is what I believe what I was taught and or told to believe or is it what I believe? Now, it’s gotta be very difficult to separate that because I don’t know that we come into this world with preconceived or already preset beliefs that those beliefs have to be sort of inculcated or taught, if you will. Is that correct? I mean, so for John to ask that question, it’s like, well, John, guess what? Everything you believe right now is what you were taught to believe. How do we shift out of that into knowing that what I believe is what I choose to believe?

Joshua: Okay, well, one step is to kind of acknowledge that different parts of us can believe different things. And when I use the word parts, I mean it in a specific way. I do talk therapy using the internal family systems model and in internal family systems, we understand the psyche is made up of a collection of parts. And probably the easiest way to explain that is like if you’ve ever had mixed feelings, suppose you’re late to work and you’re driving to work. So you have a one part of you that wants to get there on time. Another part that is afraid of getting in trouble with the law, maybe another part that’s frustrated that you left so late from home. So each of these parts can be like understood as its own kind of sub-personality. And that’s what we do in internal family systems. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because like two different parts of yourself can believe different things. Like you may have a part of yourself that has a very strong belief in science, believes in science, subscribes to allopathic medicine, other parts of you that hold non-scientific views. And that’s okay. Like we allow for that in internal family systems. Allow for that in internal family systems.

Dugan: Yeah, this is fascinating. I’ve always been intrigued by this. I will tell you the one thing that I said to my eldest sister another holiday, we were there at Thanksgiving at my parents’ house. But we were in the kitchen having this conversation, which we should have known better than to hold that in the kitchen while they’re trying to prepare for the dinner. But she was challenging me on my salvation, for example. I wasn’t ready to meet God kind of thing. By the way, I got that a lot at the radio station that I was working for, but it just rolled off my back going, but you just told me it was a personal relationship, which means there is no threesome here. This is just a dyad. It’s just the creator and me. So what business is of yours? But as we’re having this chat, and it was a calm, quiet, and good conversation, when she was saying the things that she was saying, I said, well, wait a minute. What you don’t understand is my beliefs of yesterday are not my beliefs of today, are not my beliefs of tomorrow because I’m still alive and breathing. I’m experiencing this world. I’m meeting new people. I’m having new experiences, and I don’t know what I’m gonna believe tomorrow. I have no idea. But my understanding is that belief, and this is one of the frustrations that I have sometimes, and that’s why I don’t usually get into these conversations with people, is they wanna use certain quote unquote facts. For example, there is a claim that the Noah’s Ark was found at the top of Mount Ararat. Ergo, the Bible is true. That means because the Ark was found, our belief is the only one. It’s the correct one, and so on and so forth. And my response to that and those kinds of positions is, well then, you have no faith. You cannot have a faith based upon fact because then it’s not faith anymore. You cannot have belief based upon fact because then it is not belief anymore. Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is that another one of those huts I’ve gotta burn to the ground? Or am I close to the truth where beliefs aren’t based on facts. They’re based more on personal experience and what we choose to believe.

Joshua: Right, so it depends on the kind of beliefs, the context. Let me give some examples before I go back to the example that you’ve suggested. Like I could believe it’s hot outside, but then when I check the thermometer, then I can see, oh, it’s 85, then it becomes a fact. In some kinds of information, it’s the being able to gather evidence and confirm something can move a belief to a fact, but there’s different kinds of evidence work in different contexts. So for example, like art criticism, there’s some objective information in the art world, but then some of it’s just like, well, this moves me or it doesn’t, like just based on the image. Or like cooking, like you may believe that you have a really good recipe and may be able to teach it to other people and other people may agree that it tastes good or not. So whether, like it’s a spectrum, like between some beliefs can be confirmed by evidence and others are mostly just a matter of belief, like there’s no way to confirm or disconfirm them. So going-

Dugan: Go ahead, go ahead. I’m sorry.

Joshua: So going back to the example, you had the example about a historical fact about the Bible or belief or fact, I guess, about the Ark of the Covenant. So the other thing that’s important to ask about beliefs is like, if you hold them, like what practical, does it have any practical implications for how you live? So that’s the question that I would wanna follow up with, like whether you believe or see that as a fact about Noah’s Ark, like how does that affect you in your day-to-day life?

Dugan: Yeah, very good, very good. That’s a very good question to ask in that regard. And it’s often, even in some of the conversations I’ve had, there’s been this statement that comes back to mind always when people have a certain experience and then they ask the question, why? And I have learned over the years to give up the need to know why. Maybe one day I will know why, but how does knowing why change anything? It’s the same as what you’re speaking to. And it’s very interesting. We’re talking today here on the program, very special guest who’s written this wonderful book called Religion Unburdened by Belief, The Way of Open Inquiry. And his name is Joshua Pritikin, PhD, and this is Tell Me Your Story. I’m Reverend Dr. D. He is Dr. Joshua Pritikin, written this wonderful book, and I hope you’ll get a copy of it by going to the website that I’m gonna give you right now, which I think will be, well, I know we will be linked to. I don’t think, I know we will be linked. I’ll put it in the code and all that good stuff. But it is unburdened.biz, or biz, unburdened.biz. And one of the interesting things, Joshua, is the fact that when it comes to our individual beliefs, I’m curious from your perspective, how either before you wrote this book or since, how your beliefs have changed over the years? Have you ever gone back to sort of assess where you came from from the perspective of belief and where you are today?

Joshua: Okay, so this may feel like something of a tangent, but one of the things that I believed about myself was that I wasn’t a good enough writer to write a book. And I think that belief has kind of been confirmed in a way because there’s no way I couldn’t have, could have written this without the help of chat bots, like chat GPT, or like these have really been invaluable for me in writing this book. And because like I had a intuitive sense of what I wanted to say, but then explaining it with the right, in the right pace, forming sentences that are direct and efficient. Even chat bots have helped me with organization and clarifying my ideas. It’s really remarkable how useful they are as writing assistants. And the other thing is like, I’m obsessed with this topic and I don’t know who else would be willing to discuss this for 12 hours a day with me besides these chat bots.

Dugan: I’m just learning how, I don’t think, maybe I am using a chat bot, I’m just using chat GPT. And I know this sounds very strange, you being coming from the software industry, I actually used chat GPT to do my taxes this year. But chat GPT did not give me the answers to each of the lines. I would ask questions about what needed to be in that. And of course, chat GPT or AI in a generic form has access to all that information. It can go to the IRS website and access the instructions and those kinds of things. But never, and there were certain instances where I said, okay, could you add up lines one, two, three, four, and five? And it would do it. And then I put that into the form. But then I would still get my calculator on my phone out and I would put that information in. Now, I’m not saying that chat GPT would intentionally lie or miscalculate, don’t get me wrong, but it’s my tax form. I cannot take chat GPT to an audit. It’s not gonna work. And I had a guest on the program and you obviously did something similar to my guest. He was a fiction writer of mostly Western type of genres. And at the front end of the program, I acknowledged I have a bias against AI, okay? And I was sort of buying into what I was being told by those people who were afraid. But I told them, I says, but maybe our guest will maybe give me some reason to turn that around. Turns out what he does is he puts in all of the parameters into chat GPT that he wants for the book and so many pages and so on and so forth. And then AI cranks out what he refers to as his draft. And that’s the only time in a given book that he ever uses AI is to create the draft. Then he goes in and he makes it his own. So it actually turned me around to where, yeah, okay. I’ve had conversations with AI. I’ve asked very interesting questions. I even asked about this whole business of data centers that generate all of this heat and use up so much electricity. I says, has anybody asked you or asked AI to come up with a solution? So, I mean, look how far we’ve come with cell phones, which if we had the right applications, we could launch Artemis 3, okay? We have that much technology in our hands. We’ve got to know, I said, has anybody ever asked AI how to solve this problem of excessive heat generation through the data storage as well as the excessive electrical usage, the power usage? And I didn’t, it wasn’t a question of the answer coming back yes or no. It was more of an explanation. That’s a difficult question to answer and it’s a very difficult problem to solve. But where we are today here in 2026, it’s a challenge, but who knows? By the end of 2026 or maybe not until 27 or 28, we will maybe solve that problem. Look how many problems we’ve already solved in our world with or without technology, because I still hold that the human brain is still the ultimate. It’s not perfect, but it’s just amazing what we are able to accomplish. When we, I’m curious as to your experiences within the computer industry, in 94 I began building them. At first I was afraid, I knew there was a red button on the keyboard somewhere that I would hit it and it would blow everything up, right? And then I was building them. I built a 286 and a 386 and on and on and on. I would buy one of these towers and I’d get all the peripherals. Oh my God, it was so much fun. And it made me think of, that makes me think of AI today. I mean, it’s just a program, right?

Joshua: Well, right, and so I think the fear of AI, there’s two sources really. One is the economic displacement, which is that’s a real thing we need to worry about. People have invested a lot in training and suddenly the AI can do the same kind of work that they can do. So that’s a real problem. We have to worry about that. But the other problem is people worrying about AI being conscious or kind of like an independent self-interested agent. And like, I don’t really see that happening. Like that seems like a mistake to me. What do you think?

Dugan: Well, I don’t know enough about the inner workings thereof. You being, what, you were a programmer? Yeah, I did do a lot of software development. Code writing and so forth. Well, there are arguments going in both directions. And here’s what’s interesting. When I see new technological or even in the medical field, new medical advancements, for example, CRISPR, and oh my gosh, they’ve a limit. They’ve been able to actually filter out completely cystic fibrosis. Well, that’s fantastic, except for one problem. You’ve removed the problem, the challenge, the dis-ease, but you’ve left a hole. And the universe at large, as well as on the microscopic level abhors a vacuum. What is going to fill that hole? And what do we know about the potential unintended consequences? So this has always been my question when it comes to these kinds of things, whether it’s AI, whether it’s CRISPR, or building a bridge that zigzags across the Mississippi. Just because we can, does that mean we should? And I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but that’s the question. Forgive me for bringing this one up, but it came to my mind and the universe asks the questions. I’m just along for the ride. Just because we can go to war and pummel Iran, does that mean we should?

Joshua: Okay, right. So actually, if you give me some leeway here, and let’s assume that AI is not conscious. Like the reason I don’t think that’s gonna happen is Roger Penrose has this argument that relies on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. And just he makes the argument that no matter how sophisticated the computer, human intelligence is just a different kind of category of intelligence because it goes beyond mathematical reasoning. So anyway, but just grant me that AI is not conscious and then I have a followup to that. So if AI is not conscious, then what AI is really doing is it’s manifesting an externalization in the sense that this is something that therapists that work with children do all the time in play therapy is you encourage the child to kind of reenact things with toys, like if the child is in a scary situation at home, maybe you would encourage them to play with dinosaurs and then you can talk to them about how the dinosaur is terrorizing the little animals. And it’s a way of making the unapproachable approachable. And so what I see AI doing is being like an externalization of intelligence. And so in what that does is it, it challenges the kind of identification we have with ranking people by intelligence. Like we’re, as a society, we’re like obsessed with intelligence. We have so many years of schooling and professional organizations and we have money to compensate people that are the most intelligent. So there’s an argument here that by externalizing intelligence, we’re able to see ourselves or separate the human worth and the intelligence, which still is important. But I think it’s a way of highlighting the value of humanity and the value of human, or like as a justification for human dignity, like here we are conscious beings and that’s really something special. It is very interesting that we,

Dugan: have so much difficulty in understanding, or in accepting certain things. For example, these, I still refer to them as UFO documents that were just released. Now, as far as I have heard, there’s been nothing definitive in those documents that changes much of anything in terms of one’s belief in whether or not we’re not alone. Now, I personally believe that if we’re here, and you know, I have no evidence to support this. If we’re here, then there are others here. Plus the fact that somehow this universe was created by someone, something, maybe, you know. I mean, I’m more of a metaphysician. I deal more in what is not physical rather than what is. And most of the ancient wisdom teachings talk about that. But once again, I mean, there are those in this country in particular in the United States who, you know, they won’t believe anything that science tells them anymore because they have been told, and what they believe now is that, you know, science doesn’t, you know, isn’t accurate, and so on and so forth. To which I then respond, okay, I’m gonna give you three scenarios, and I’m gonna tell you, first of all, you’ve got, let’s say, the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then let’s take a look at the shooting, let’s just say, of Ronald Reagan, the president at the time. And then let’s take a look at 9-11, all right? I don’t know that they happened, because I wasn’t there. All I’ve seen are images. There are people who don’t believe we went to the moon, either. I love Neil deGrasse Tyson, who had a conversation with a guy who didn’t believe, so Neil gives him the website where all the photographs are. And the guy went there and comes back, says, I still don’t believe. He said, well, then we’re done. I can’t have a conversation with you anymore because I’ve given you all of the data, all of the information. But in this virtual age in which we live, how do we know what is and isn’t real? There are people now, right now, 60% of Democrats, and 30% of Republicans, this was on the news. This was not on Facebook and of real state. They believe, again, believe, the assassination attempt at the dinner a few weeks ago was staged. And believe it or not, I’m leaning that way, too, because I’m sitting here going, you had Secret Service that are supposed to be marksman. They didn’t hit him once, but he hit them twice. Huh, really? And I’m not gonna go down that road, but this is where we are today in terms of what we know versus what we believe or what we choose to believe.

Joshua: Mm-hmm, yeah, those are good questions. I don’t know how to address that in a political context, but from a religious context, what I advocate for in the book is practices that don’t require belief, that don’t rely on belief. So I think practices that, where the outcome, you get accurate feedback about the outcome and you don’t have to, there’s no prerequisite beliefs you have to hold besides some minimal process beliefs.

Dugan: Well, it’s a frustration for a lot of us because I grew up, obviously I’m 66 this year and I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I believe we went to the moon. It was exciting. I believe that the Artemis astronauts circled the moon and were further away than any other human has ever been from the planet. These are things, again, that I choose to believe I can use the evidence that is presented to prove my belief, if you will, and maybe call it a knowing. But that’s one of the things Greg Braden talked about on our program some years ago. He said that today we believe, tomorrow, if you will, we will know. Do you think that that is something that we as human beings, and obviously based upon your book and so forth, that we’re spiritual beings having a human experience, a physical experience, that one day, like maybe when we pass and we leave this body, that we will actually know some of the things that we know? Is that, I hate to put it this way, is that your belief?

Joshua: We will write, I think you’re, assuming there is an experience after death, if you’re experiencing it, then I guess that is a kind of knowledge, but it’s not something you can really bring back with you because it’s kind of, the problem with death is it’s a one-way, in most cases, it’s a one-way door.

Dugan: That is true.

Joshua: Yeah. I’m not sure which way you want this conversation to go, like the, I did have a further thought about our political situation, how the book could, okay. So because I’m also very concerned about how, how tumultuous our politics are right now. And-

Dugan: And they’ve even taken on sort of a religious tone to them.

Joshua: Yes. And so my thinking is like that politics are kind of downstream of how, where people are at in their self-development and I think religion has a part to play there. And so my thinking is like, if people, if I can revitalize religion and there can be more empathy and compassion among people individually, then that will have the downstream effects of more compassionate and empathetic kind of political environment. So that’s kind of a long shot, right?

Dugan: I hear you, I hear you. Joshua Pritikin is my guest, Dr. Joshua Pritikin. And of course, we are talking about his book, which is, I think, fascinating. You gotta get a copy of this. At unburdened.biz, B-I-Z, that’s the book is entitled, Religion Unburdened by Belief, The Way of Open Inquirer as we continue here on Tell Me Your Story. I wanna ask you, Dr. Joshua Pritikin, in regards to your book and of course, this subtitle, of course, The Way of Open Inquiry. It’s rather humorous in my perspective. Back in the mid-early 90s, I became connected with a group of people, they were Baha’is, and I would go to their home for their, what they called, firesites, which were opportunities to sit and discuss and converse. And I’d been for several meetings and I asked them, I says, well, is it okay if I read other things other than the writings of Baha’u’llah and the other founders and so on and so forth? Sure, you can read whatever you want, but you’re gonna end up coming right back to the writings, which I thought was, there’s a certain element of, I don’t know, arrogance there in that respect, but they were kind about it. And then the other aspect of it was when I was about ready to make the step from Catholicism to the Baha’i faith, I had written a letter requesting the Catholic church that I was born and raised in and baptized with communion and all things, that I wanted to be removed from the roles. I did not wanna be on the list anymore as a Catholic. So I went into the rectory and I handed the letter to the gal across the counter and she says, well, put it in your file. And my response was, oh, you and the FBI have a file on me? Okay, well, when a year and a half after becoming associated with the Baha’is, I couldn’t make that final step. So I called the woman, the wife of the couple who’s home, I would go to for the firesides. And I said, I cannot in good conscience go forward because I feel as though I would be joining under false pretenses and those false pretenses were that I needed to be accepted. I needed to be told that the direction I was going was, I needed affirmation, I guess is the better way. And she understood and she says, don’t worry, we will take your name off of the roles and you can come back any time. Now, that’s what I expected from the Catholic church. But I was allowed to search anywhere and everywhere that I wanted, whereas within Christianity in general, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you only read the Bible and or other works by other Christians or the founding fathers, if you will, of the faith. And of course, I was asking all of these different questions and they said, well, just go read the writings of the founding fathers. And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. First of all, who set them up as the arbiters of the faith? Number one. Number two, I never heard of some of these guys. I’m thinking independently, at least I used to think that I was thinking independently. So does that elevate me to their level? Okay, because I’m asking the same questions that they are because you’re telling me to go read their writings. But I’m wondering in terms of open inquiry, how important is that? I mean, your experiences are one thing, those are personal and so forth. But if you’re looking for further answers, maybe, I don’t know, to support or bolster your beliefs, not so much, you know, knowing, but your beliefs, how important and vital is that open inquiry being allowed as my parents did for all of us to search whatever and wherever you wanted to?

Joshua: Yeah, the question kind of reminds me of the mystery belief spectrum that I talked about earlier in the book. And so the interesting thing about this is you can evaluate traditions without really knowing much about them. You gave some great examples. The example that I like to talk about is in Judaism, there’s the ultra-orthodox branch, which is where the rabbis have most of the authority, there’s a lot of rules to memorize and then compare that to the reform branch of Judaism that’s much more open-ended. And the rabbis are just there for guidance maybe, but everyone is asked to develop their own moral sense. And it’s much less strict. So the, and I loved your examples too, the Catholic church, the way you described it sounds more on the belief heavy side, belief system side, whereas the Bahá’í religion sounds more on the mystery side, that’s more interested in questions and mystery and experiences and discussion and challenging ideas. And the book also has, it takes a position on the spectrum. It advocates for the mystery side, the questioning side of the spectrum.

Dugan: I find it fascinating, you talk about religion being unburdened by belief. What’s your definition of religion?

Joshua: Well, so I rely on Carse’s definition. And when Carse says that we can recognize, like is it, there isn’t really a great definition, but we can recognize religions that are not religious. We can recognize religions that are traditions that have been around a long time. So, you know, maybe a thousand years, that doesn’t mean that new religions are automatically ruled out, but this is more of a way of trying to identify like clear cut religion. So that it has to be old and there’s a community and an identity around it that’s sustained for such a long time.

Dugan: I know that there are definitions of terms. I like to do that on this program is define the words that we’re using. And I understand and accept your definition, especially in the context of your book, religion unburdened by belief. And again, I think people should get a copy of it. I love the definition as spelled out in the scriptures by Jesus who said, true religion is taking care of the orphans and the widows et cetera, et cetera. Which is sort of kind of what’s at the base of the Statue of Liberty, you know, it’s the same kind of situation. Bring us your huddled masses, et cetera, et cetera. But I find it unfortunate that a lot of people who have these different beliefs, they’ve had these different experiences and then they’re cut down. And it’s like, wait a minute, you can’t do that to these people who have had these experiences like my friend who has these out of body experiences. It’s like those experiences, supernatural, if you wanna describe them that way or paranormal, those experiences have changed them already. They’ve changed already. It’s kind of like those people using this example, who have been abducted by extraterrestrials and gone through whatever they went through, they’ve been changed. They are not the same, but then use a less dramatic in that regard example, people who go into combat and they go into conflict and so forth. They go on the front lines, you know, and so forth. They’re never the same, that kind of thing. Sure. Are you a believer in miracles?

Joshua: Well, what do you mean by miracle?

Dugan: That’s a good question, you know, it’s, I mean, it just depends. My mother asked me once if I’d ever had any supernatural experiences and I said, well, if I did, they seem normal to me. Great, so how do you define supernatural, right? Same problem. I know that when my eldest sister passed and I got a phone call and they told me, and at first I thought it was gonna be my father, they were gonna tell me it passed. As soon as I hung up the phone, I heard this voice and it was my sister’s voice that said, hey, Richard, everything’s okay, I’m okay, I’m good. Something along the words along those lines. Now, I don’t hear my father’s voice, I haven’t since he passed, I get impressions. What’s your thought with the connection of our intuition or what I like to call the still small voice inside when it comes to beliefs? Is that a place that you can go to? And I’m asking you specifically, personally, that you can go to and know that what you believe, what you, Joshua Pritikin, believe, you’re going in the right way, or you need to go over this way just a little bit more because you’re a little off target, that kind of thing. Have you ever had that kind of an experience or are you aware of anything along those lines? Can you give me an example or try to clarify what kind of experience you’re talking about? Well, at first it sounded like you were talking about hearing voices or something like contact with the spirit world, but. That’s part of it, yes, but okay, the one example I use quite often is that I was, when I was living in Phoenix, I bicycled everywhere before I had a lens implant and I’m now driving. And I’m bicycling to the radio station, which is at the transmitter site in Phoenix. And I drove through or past farm fields. And the farm fields were one mile square. So I’m pedaling along and all of a sudden I get this impression, okay, you need to turn right up here. Turn right at the next corner. And I’m sitting here thinking, if I go to the right, I’m gonna go three miles out of my way and I gotta get to work. I wasn’t late or anything, but I gotta get to work. Well, I go past that intersection and the prompting gets stronger and stronger to the point where I was half a mile past that turn that I was prompted to take. I turned around, I went back and I went up that road and then I went over another mile and then back down and then down to the road I was on in the first place, headed on. And some would say, well, maybe the universe was trying to tell you if you were gonna avoid an accident or this, that, the other thing. Well, there were no other cars on those roads at that time and the conclusion I came to was it wasn’t about protecting me, it was about putting into practice what I had been saying over the years that I trust that inner voice, I trust that still small voice. And what the still small voice, if you will, was saying through that prompting was, do you really, are you serious? Do you really trust me? And if you do, do this. And that’s kind of where I have come from ever since that experience, especially that experience. But I’ve had other examples where I had this plan to handle our finances at a particular period and all of a sudden I get the prompting, you need to do this. And I’m going, wait a minute, that’s not in my plan. And of course the prompting just kept hammering away. All right, all right, I’ll do it. And I did it. Three days later, I looked back and I’m going, oh man, am I glad I did that because if I hadn’t, things would be a lot worse today. Those are the kinds of experiences that reinforce and I guess I have to put it this way, my belief in that still small voice. Because I don’t think that the intellect processes the information that we take in. In that context, the mind does not see into the future or at least as far as like, no, it doesn’t, okay? Can you share any experiences like that that you have had or what are your, where are you coming from with what I have shared in that regard?

Joshua: Okay, so what I think I hear from you is in this small, quiet voice, you see it as a guide that it’s helping you advance your goals. But it doesn’t so much feel as like a part of yourself. It seems like it’s carrying messages from outside possibly and that’s very valuable, like it’s wonderful that you have that guidance and that you’re finding it helpful. I mentioned things like that in the book, but the frustration that I have with those kinds of experiences is that they feel kind of accidental to me. I don’t know how to request guidance on my timeline, right? So it’s wonderful that you found that helpful and if that voice wants your trust and you’re finding that beneficial, then carry on. But I don’t know how to advise people how to receive guidance like that.

Dugan: Well, and again, it’s to me a lot of fun in these conversations to reach maybe a juxtaposition. It’s like I had a conversation with my brother. We’re on opposite ends of the political spectrum and that’s just fine. As a matter of fact, that’s great because I can learn from him and I’m hoping he can learn from me as well. But we had this conversation and when it started, because I knew I could sense where he was coming from, I said, okay, when you get to the end of this conversation, remember, he is still your blood. He is still your brother and you still love him, all right? And there is not gonna be any estrangement here because he’s entitled to where he’s coming from just as I am entitled to where I’m coming from. And the remarkable thing, and I share this every time, was that when the conversation was over, despite maybe because of our differences, we actually agreed on three challenges that needed to be dealt with. Not necessarily how to, but that we had three items. And it’s like, well, aside from the fact that we come from the same parents and we grew up in the same home and so forth and so on and so on, all of the similarities, we still have our differences, but look at this. Here’s three more things that we have in common. Oh my gosh, that’s fantastic. And now my brother, I share this too, my brother is now gonna be a father for the first time. And he’s 64 and I think about that going, I don’t know what the educational system is like in Vietnam, whether they have eight grades and then high school or not, but based upon our system here, it’s like, you do realize you’re gonna be 82 when he’s out of high school. But I think it’s great, I really do. And I don’t have all the answers. I’ve never claimed to have them. I have some, at least right now I have them, but they may change tomorrow. And they may have changed because of our conversation and that one guest I was telling you about who uses AI to start his book. He changed my mind in that regard. And then I started, I did fricking taxes. I did my taxes with AI, oh my God. Who does that? Who needs H&R Block? I just hope that I did fill out all the right forms and so forth. I know that I sent them to the right place, but it’s really, it’s an incredible world, isn’t it? And you are trying to help people to open that up as well by taking a look at their beliefs, right? And understand that though your beliefs are important because they are what make us who we are, right? There is always room for improvement and for change. That’s kind of what you’re saying within the context of your book, A Religion Unburdened by Belief.

Joshua: Well, yes, and also to suggest practices that don’t depend on belief. That where your self-development can be assessed more accurately than by beliefs.

Dugan: Well, I will say that to me, for me, it is exciting to think about from the standpoint that on the one hand, we’ve come so far as a species and yet we still have a long way to go. Yeah. But I’m optimistic, are you?

Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. It was until everything is ruined, there’s always a chance that we can turn this world into a much more beautiful place to live.

Dugan: Do you think that we can control that in any way? I mean, there are those who believe that we are all connected. We’re all part of the one, however you define that. I think it was Young, I think it was Young who said, there’s only one mind in the universe and we’re all part of it. And that there’s one other statement too, I’ll throw in there. I’m wondering if you believe this, that we do indeed create our own reality.

Joshua: I mean, I’m not sure which question you’re asking. It seems like a few different questions. What I understood at first is you’re asking if I believe that the future is fated, like if we have any influence over the future, the future is fated, like if we have any influence over how the future develops. And I think we do. I think that there’s been some carefully designed psychological research that shows that thoughtful decisions are better than kind of decisions that you make without much forethought. And then you can also look at the evidence that evolution has, we’re successful because we’re very intelligent, like that’s what makes us a successful output of evolution. So that intelligence has an influence, has a reason for existing, is like, is helping us be better at surviving. So I think we do have a lot of scope to shape the future. Okay.

Dugan: To me, fascinating just to contemplate the possibilities. I mean, my wife made this comment not long ago about our situation that’s been going on for about a year where we had to move 200 miles to the east from where we were living for almost 20 years. And she says, it feels like we’re on a new timeline. Timeline. And I thought that was an interesting observation. I don’t know if it’s true or not. All I know is that life as we know it doesn’t exist. It’s kind of like, that’s kind of what REM said in their song. It’s the end of the world as we know it, every moment of every day. I wrote a book called Choices, Five Steps for Life. And in my conversations with people about that and other things, I’ve often thought about this in terms of choices. We are, you and I are right here today talking because of choices that we’ve made throughout our lives. It’s that domino with the Rube Goldberg effect, if you will, right? Yeah, yeah. And I was sharing this with another guest and they said, well, you also know too that where you’ll be tomorrow or in five years or what have you is based upon all the choices that you make now. But he added an interesting proviso to that. He says, but the choices that you make today are based upon what you perceive the future to be. So if you’re one who’s in the mindset of let’s just say a prepper, you’re gonna dig a hole in the ground and line it with concrete and then fill it with supplies and so forth for you and your family. I’m an optimist. I’m not gonna dig a hole in the ground. I’m gonna buy a house as my wife and I just did. And we’re gonna enjoy our latter years. I’ve got another, I hope, 34 years to go. I wanna live to be 100. But I wanted to do it with quality of life. I would like to do it in a world that is friendly, you know, that kind of thing. But there are no guarantees, right? Yeah. So to me, there’s this whole thing about choice. And we choose our beliefs as well based upon what? Would you say that it’s based upon a lot of things or like John Fisher was asking the question, are these my beliefs or are these the beliefs that I was told to believe? Do you know that we formulate new beliefs that then become ours?

Joshua: Well, I do wanna acknowledge like there’s this book, I think the title is Determined by Sapolsky and like he made this argument that all of our, you know, everything about the current moment is determined by decisions that have, you know, the past decisions of all determine the current moment. And that’s kind of the argument that like everything is fated to happen and like maybe you don’t have any control over what happens. But I think that, I think there is some window for free will. I’m not sure how to account for that in terms of physics models, but that’s just my intuition that there is some small opportunity for expressing free will and we should make the most of it.

Dugan: Yeah, I would agree with you. I have a real problem when it comes to people who believe in the prophecies as if we’re locked in to these different events. And I’m going, well, if that is true, we don’t have free will, we don’t. I mean, because if everything is already predetermined, it doesn’t matter what choices that I make, we’re going down that road, whether we like it or not. Again, the old taken down the road kicking and screaming, as I mentioned earlier. What are your thoughts in regards to those kinds of things that people choose to believe? Do you think that influences our future in the respect that you just described?

Joshua: I mean, sure, that could influence if you had, like the example I mentioned before about if you have expectations about how your religious practice is what the results are gonna be, then that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, that your beliefs can certainly shape your experience. I mean, that’s why the first chapter of the book is careful to ask people to reduce the conviction in their beliefs. So instead of having such a strong belief in that prophecy, what’s wrong with believing in it a little bit less and taking more of a wait and see approach?

Dugan: Yeah, I tend to agree. And then there’s two other things. Number one is there are those who, I mean, I wanna live to be 100 only because I made this commitment to my great grandmother, not directly to her, but it was like she passed away after she made it to 100. And I really loved the woman and I’m going, I wanna live as long as she did. So that’s one of the reasons why. And then there’s the other element too where there are those who they don’t wanna die so they wanna have their consciousness, I guess, transferred to a robot so they can live forever. And I’m just sitting here going, I just wanna live the normal life and then move on to whatever’s next. And by the way, speaking of which, I’ve been asked about death and asked, is there anything after this? And I said, I can tell you what I believe as our conversation continues. If there’s nothing after this, we’re not gonna know anyway, okay? But if there is, it doesn’t make any sense in my logical brain to think that there’s nothing based upon all of this stuff. I mean, just this conversation that you and I are having. Really? And then there’s nothing after this? Come on. Again, my belief, I don’t have any clue. I don’t know for sure. Yeah.

Joshua: I mean, the other evidence that speaks to that question is people that have had recalled experiences of death so that they’ve been clinically dead but come back. Like sometimes they report having experiences while they were clinically dead. And then the other evidence that speaks to this is that people who use certain psychedelic drugs, like serotonergic psychedelics, like psilocybin, they also report that sometimes they feel like the boundary between self and other dissolves. And that’s, they report it as kind of similar to death in the sense because they, you know, it’s when that boundary dissolves, then you’re really not an individual anymore. You’re, you kind of become part of whatever is there. And they do report that, I mean, I’ve had these experiences too, that you’re, you don’t disappear, you’re not annihilated just because you don’t feel like an individual anymore. There’s still an awareness, there’s still something that’s happening. They have experiences and then you come back.

Dugan: It’s funny because the thought just occurred to me. There’s this, there’s a series called Deep Space Nine and there’s a character in there called a changeling. And he has to revert to his original form, which is liquid. But when he goes back to his planet, for example, and he joins with the others, the others are already all liquid. And it’s kind of like what you described. He’s still an individual in there somewhere, but he’s also now part of the collective. And it’s like, wow. Or even, if you will, the upside of, let’s say, the Borg in Star Trek, Next Generation. Sure. Let’s set aside the malefic aspects of the Borg. There are individuals, but they’re all part of the collective. They’re all carrying out different tasks to achieve an overall goal. And I feel that way, for example, with what I do and what you do. You’re doing your part in your part of the world with what you’ve chosen to pursue. In this case, obviously writing of this book, A Religion Unbounded by Belief, The Way of Open Inquiry. I’m doing what I do by doing these interviews and working for the station and with my wife buying this house. And then we share those experiences with others, that energy, that, and so forth. And it changes other people too. It’s one of the reasons why I try not to watch the news any more than I have to, or to steer away from it when it comes up, because I don’t need that in my life. I don’t want that in my life. I wanna stay optimistic. I wanna stay positive, if you will. I wanna create. Now, I also know too that even from the Hindu perspective, there’s both creation and destruction. And then out of destruction comes creation. And with chaos, there’s clarity, if you will, or there’s structure. And then out of structure comes chaos. And it goes back and forth. It’s a cycle. And somehow we’ve gotta learn that. Joshua is my guest. Joshua, Pritikin PhD, author once again of Religion Unburdened by Belief, The Way of Open Inquiry. Unburdened.biz, B-I-Z, is the website, and this is Tell Me Your Story. Joshua, I wanna thank you. This has been a fascinating conversation. And what I love most fascinating about it is that we haven’t agreed on everything as we’ve gone through this. You have your perspective, I have mine. I’m not saying that our perspectives have necessarily changed and they don’t have to, but just to have the conversation to hear where you’re coming from. Is this your first book, by the way? Tell us, share us about the library that you’ve written. Oh, no, no, this is my first book. And I don’t know if you mentioned, but I grew up in Santa Barbara. Aren’t you in, isn’t that where you’re based?

Joshua: I used to be in Santa Barbara.

Dugan: We had to move. We moved to Twin Peaks up here by Lake Arrowhead. And we’re absolutely loving it. And we bought a house. And you and I both know this ain’t the right time to buy a house.

Joshua: Well, it all depends upon what the universe brings your way.

Dugan: We didn’t have to work that hard at it. That’s not to say we didn’t worry. We didn’t stress. We didn’t need to because boom, here we are. But yeah, I love Santa Barbara, loved being by the water. And I’m only about an hour and a half away from Huntington Beach. So we’re gonna get out there. I even wanna get over to the port. I can’t remember the name of the port now to take a trip on the ferry out to Catalina Island. We’ve been out there a couple of times and boy, that’s a lot of fun. But I just love the ocean, I love the water. But the mountains ain’t bad and the snow keeps it nice and cool. So it’s a wonderful place. Are you still living in Santa Barbara?

Joshua: No, I’m near Medford, Oregon.

Dugan: Oh, okay, you moved to the north.

Joshua: Southern border of Oregon. Yeah.

Dugan: Well, we almost moved up to Washington, northwestern Washington. I can’t even remember now the name of the community. I wanna say Birmingham or not Birmingham, but in any event, almost moved up there. I had a friend up there that was gonna get us set up and so forth, but things shifted. You know, we decided to get on a different timeline. I guess it’s one way to put it. But I really appreciate your time. I do have three final questions that I do wanna ask you. But before I do, I wanna thank you for listening to and watching Tell Me Your Story, New Paradigms for a New World, where we’re giving you choices and knowledge of those choices to help make your dreams come true. Sundays at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday mornings at 1 a.m., Wednesdays at 9 a.m., and Monday through Friday from 8 to 9 a.m., streaming live at all those times at richarddugan.com. We also have podcasts on SoundCloud, iTunes, TuneIn Radio, Spotify, Stitcher, Playground FM, Blueberry, iArt Radio, Amazon Music, and we’re on YouTube and Rumble. We hope that you will subscribe and click notification. We also hope you’ll go and pick up a copy of my book, Choices, Five Steps for Life, available at Amazon. It’s available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle, and we also would love to ask you, if you could, to support the work that we’re doing financially. We do have a tip jar, it’s called PayPal. Just put in my email address, richard at richarddugan.com, and I thank you, thank you, thank you to those who have helped and to those who will help. And finally, we ask that you take some time during this, the decade of perfect vision, to go within to that quiet, peaceful, calm, still place, and listen to that still, small voice. With all of that being said, we move to our final three questions for a very special guest, and I’m very appreciative of his being with us here on the program. First question I have is, who is Josh Pritikin?

Joshua: Yeah, so in internal family systems, we learned that people are composed of a collection of cooperating parts, so I see myself as, you know, in that way, and also in experiences of altered states, I’ve had experiences where the boundary between self and other dissolves, and I find myself confronted with this larger presence, and so I also see myself as kind of like a servant of that larger presence.

Dugan: Well, what gets you up in the morning?

Joshua: Well, I’m concerned about the political, the way that politics is developing right now, and that’s because I see politics as kind of downstream of religion, that’s why I feel like this book is a small gesture, something small that I can hopefully influence people and revitalize religion and hopefully develop people’s empathy and compassion a little bit more, and then with that increased empathy and compassion at the small scale, hopefully that can have an influence in a bigger way. Just to dovetail off of that, I know this may sound strange, but I’ve reached a point where I actually have compassion for the man at the top, he’s hurting, he is hurting, okay? That’s why he is the way he is now, doesn’t mean he can’t change, and I’m not asking him to, but I do understand, and I have empathy for him in that regard, so.

Dugan: Final question, sort of from a movie you might remember, what was your best day?

Joshua: Yeah, so, when I was working on this book, I had the manuscript mostly done, and then I was hoping to find somebody to write a foreword, and I reached out to academics, but it’s a very difficult and frustrating process, like these people are so busy, sometimes they respond, sometimes they don’t even respond to your email, and I managed to get ahold of Franco Fabro just by accident, just by searching for academics on the internet with lots of citations, and so I was very pleased that he agreed to work on it, but then when I finally got the foreword back, that was my best day, like, it was such a vindication to have a recommendation from someone who has published 300 peer-reviewed papers and books, and has more than 14,000 citations, so that was my best day.

Dugan: Well, we again thank you for being here on the program and sharing your perspectives on things, on religion, on belief, as well as on open inquiry, and we encourage people once again to go to unburdened.biz, that’s unburdened.biz, and until our next broadcast, podcast, video cast, love to all, Janette, I’m still listening, Dad, continue to be happy because I am, Smokey, I’ll see you on the other side, Mike, thanks for being in my life and letting me be in yours, to my brother Michael, congratulations, Dad, and to my dear friend Zorro, ah-ho, ah-ho. Thank you.